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stockholm

It is Cherry Blossom Time presently. Once a year we all (or many of us) go to Kungsträdgården (Kungsan)( in Stockholm to watch and take pictures of the cherry blossoms there when they blossom as best. I’ve been there before for that, but missed it the last couple of years. This year weather was prefect. Sunny. Warm. Everyone was there. So were a lot of Japanese for some reason, and som buddist monks. Here are some pictures from this years bloom.

Not so interested in the cherry blossoms…

All this pinkness is overwhelming.

When I was done taking pictures I walk to the other end of Kungsan (Kungsträdgården) to have a short, nostalgic look at the tea-house where I spent lots of hours with friends during several summers when I was young. The tea-house under the elm-trees looks much the same as it did then. It even looks like they still have the same chairs as they did then. Uncomfortable ones…

There is this round building in the middle of the traffic system at Slussen, Stockholm, called Kolingsborg. Kolingsborg was built 1953–54, from drawings by architect Arthur von Schmalensee. The building had to begin with offices for the port authorities of Stockholm. The building has also been housing a nightclub, architect offices, and the Bobbadilla club.

I grew up in the neighborhood and have seen this building most of my life. Passed it the other day on my way from the Southern parts of Stockholm to the City. The following are my own pictures of Kolingsborg from September 21st 2015.

(TBT Throw Back Thursday) I grew up in this quarter, from when I was born and the thirty (30) first years of my life. Then I, like so many others who grew up in this area, moved to the suburbs. Population in these blocks has changed a lot. These were workers blocks. Not so today.

This was the entrance to the house. I lived on the second floor towards the back of the house. All we saw from our windows was a wall without anything at all on it. The houses behind us, in the next block were higher up on the mountain than our house. To see what the weather was like outside you had to open the window and lean out… Which season we could not see, as there was no greenery at all in our backyards.

The next block, east of us in the direction of Slussen, looks like this. Cobble stones. Old houses, regarded as picturesque today, but was far from it when I grew up. Today they are modernized, but when I was a kid they had no hot water indoors, only cold, no heating other than a wood-burner, no WC, only outhouses behind the houses. Very primitive. Our house was one of the most modern ones in these blocks.

Those cobblestones… my knees remember them. We ran there daily, me and the boys I played with, and sometimes fell.

This is the beginning of my street, Brännkyrkagatan. Brännkyrkagatan once was the longest street in Stockholm. But that didn’t last. It was changed in the 60-ties when it was cut off and renamed at certain points. Very steep ascent. Cobblestones again. For a while they had them covered by asphalt, but they returned it to its initial state and removed the asphalt when it became interesting to keep old areas as they once were. I’ve passed here many times, particularly during my youth as to the right from here there was a passageway beside the railway-bridge that led to the center of town and the Old Town. This was the closest way to where things happened…

Apparently some other people also had the same thought… Don’t people work on an ordinary Monday? Not all of them were tourists, even though there were quite a lot of tourists too. Everyone was taking pictures. Both of the flowers and of themselves with flowers. Some actually took branches with flowers on with them… which I find really bad to do.

I am glad I went to watch them today. They are almost done and if it rains tonight, as is said it will, they will soon be gone. This roof of pink flowers… wow! I’ve never visited before when it has been cherry blossom time. The blooming is so short that you have to hurry if you want to see it. It is easy to miss the few days it lasts.